Apr 25 Ep. 386 - The Rose Beauty

In olden times, when the camel was a horse-dealer, the mouse a barber, the cuckoo a tailor, the tortoise a baker, and the ass still a servant, there was a miller who had a black cat. Besides this miller, there was a Padishah who had three daughters, aged respectively forty, thirty, and twenty years. The eldest went to the youngest and made her write a letter to her father in these terms:

“Dear father, one of my sisters is forty, the other thirty, and they have not yet married. Take notice that I will not wait so long before I get a husband.”

The Padishah on reading the letter sent for his daughters and thus addressed them: “Here are a bow and arrow for each of you; go and shoot, and wherever your arrows fall, there you will find your future husbands.”